Long time no see! A lot of changes here and not much time, but now I’m back with new energies and a lot of zeal!

Unfortunately, I must admit that the 15mm scale is not my cup of tea so I apologized to the good old 28mm and I’m back at the painting desk.

While surfing the Net in search of an inspiration for a new project I found Warlord Games’ site. It just blew my mind away. Not only do they have battle systems in 28mm scale but also they have them available for a large variety of epochs. Starting with the Ancient Times, then through the Middle Ages, 30 Years War, Napoleaon’s Campaigns, American Civil War and ending with WWII. I first fell in love with the German side in Flames of War (15mm) but the 28mm series just took my breath away.

BOLT ACTION, because that’s what the original system by Warlord Games is called, is a World War II battle game system in exactly 28mm scale. I bought a starter kit and now I’m waiting for the courier to knock on my door. The fervor is back, and so I’m back to work. I’m still looking for some fellow gamers to try this system amongst friends. Let us hope for the best!

A standard new generation board game: a board, some counters and miniatures for pawns. A pretty solid piece of entertainment I must say. A few of the minis were already primed with white undercoat as the owner of the game said he plans to paint all of the minis to add even more awesomeness to the game. That got me thinking: me, a great fan of Talisman and not a single mini even primed. SHAME ON ME!

So, without further ado, let’s get started. First project: TROLL

The mini is slightly off the standard 28mm scale - made of plastic by Fantasy Flight Games. I must admit, that they did a good job with details. Of course, I’ll change the base to a more standard one but at the same time I’ll try not to change too much of the original design.

I chose a starter box to By Fire and Sword system by Polish Wargamer.The set SWE-12: SWEDISH SKIRMISH SET contains a total of 40 models.

For starters, let’s take a look at the MOUNTED DRAGOONS.

We’ve got 12 models of horses and the same number of riders, to be placed on a total of 4 bases, 3 on each. By the rules of OiM ( By Fire and Sword ) these will represent a company of 200 soldiers. The casts are pretty neat :). The kit also includes the right amount of plastic stands but I’ve decided to put all squads on custom 3mm HDF bases.

So far I’ve carefully cleaned the horse models of redundant metal and filled all the gaps with green stuff. After polishing it I split them into trios that will go onto the bases (there are a couple of patterns so we can go crazy :) )

The figures were glued to temporary stands made of bottle plugs to facilitate easy access while painting. Because of the scale, I will paint the horses and the riders separately for precision and only after that I will assemble everything together.

I put Vallejo’s black undercoat on the models already and now they’re ready for some proper brush.